Frank commentary from an unretired call girl

Interview: Jill Brenneman (Part Two)

The only sense from me that seemed to interest him was pain. – Jill Brenneman

This is a continuation of an interview which started yesterday; if you have not read it please go back and read that part first. As I said yesterday, the first two parts are the most graphic, disturbing narrative I have yet published or am likely to publish again, and I must caution sensitive readers to consider carefully before proceeding.

Maggie: So were the clients just as bad as he was?

Jill: The clients tended to be less violent or sadistic than he was. There were a variety of fetishes, of roleplays involving rape, torture, sometimes faking death. Sometimes he gave me stims because after multiple clients in a day I often was in a daze and was struggling to remain attached to the present and coherent. Eventually I started doing some outcall work, even occasional streetwalking on really cold nights ostensibly to remind me of where I would be without him.

Maggie: How did that “loyalty test” you spoke of earlier happen? Was it a kind of trick to make you paranoid of anyone who offered to help?

Jill: One night I was brought to a client named Brian by one of Bruce’s friends, a guy named Chuck. Brian invited me in, told me he just wanted to talk. I mostly listened as he talked about wanting to understand what makes a girl do what I’m doing, then he asked me a question. He said he knew who Bruce was, that he was a terrible man who was obviously hurting me. He could see the bruises on my wrists and ankles, he saw some of the scars. He told me, if I agreed, he would hire me again the next night and help me get away from Bruce. I didn’t agree at the outset but he sold me on it and I agreed.

The next night I was dropped off at Brian’s house as promised. Brian invited me in, this time inviting me upstairs to the living room; when I got there I saw Bruce, Chuck and some other men there. Bruce said to me “you know what you’ve done, don’t you”. I agreed that I did know. He told me to strip, to get on my knees. He threw a dog collar at me and told me to put it on so tight I couldn’t breathe. I came as close to that as the collar would go, then he handcuffed me and left me kneeling for a long time while the guys talked about my betrayal, about how I was going to spend my last few hours alive. They took me to Brian’s dungeon and every man got to do everything he wanted to. For a while I was gagged because apparently they were realistic in realizing it was impossible to not scream. Midway through the night Bruce took me to the bathroom, told me to get in the bath tub, that they’d had it with my bullshit. He reminded me of the contract, that I was his slave and that I had to do whatever I was told. He took the handcuffs off, then put a gun in my mouth and told me to grab it and pull the trigger. The guys were impressed that I didn’t hesitate and didn’t try to turn it on one of them. When I pulled the trigger nothing happened and the gun was taken away. By then I was crying, but not for the reason they thought; I was crying because there wasn’t a bullet. It wasn’t death that scared me, it was living through more.

The night was hours more torture which included hanging me by my neck, which damaged my larynx to an extent that is still obvious today. It never fully healed correctly. When the night was finally over I was left in the bathroom chained to the sink. Everything hurt to such an extent it was virtually impossible to move. I knew I was bleeding from either my vagina or rectum or both but didn’t care and couldn’t move enough to look. They left me there for a couple of days, aside from kicking at me to see if I’d move or taunting me with water to drink…I didn’t work again for over a week until enough of the bruises had disappeared.

Maggie: So obviously, Bruce was a sexual sadist of an extreme kind; it seems that torturing and breaking you was really his primary motivation, and the money was only secondary.

Jill: Yes, I agree with that. I don’t know that specifically as he never said it straight out. And clearly money was important and I was bringing him a lot of it. I was very young and clients could essentially do almost anything they wanted to with me and I would do almost anything the client wanted. I didn’t have any say in the matter. I believe Bruce found a way to make a great deal of money and indulge his motivation. I think his sadism went to such an extreme that it kept getting harder and harder for him to be fulfilled. He talked often about how hot he felt it was when I got a certain look in my eyes. It’s hard to describe this in writing. The look was essentially that I wasn’t there anymore emotionally. That he had caused so much pain and so much degradation that it didn’t matter who did what anymore. He took great pride in demonstrating to his friends and other men what he could do to me, how easily he could make me say anything he wanted. Our cover story, that he came up with, was that I was a college freshman that was studying “women’s lib” until I had met him. Now I was his slave and he was proud to demonstrate that to other men.

Maggie: Since you were so totally broken, how in the world did you ever get away from him?

Jill: All the violence, degradation and shame had left me totally compliant. I also knew I had no place to go if I did get away; I had no one to call and I was terrified of the police as I had some awful cop clients. So I finally only escaped his control through a fluke. One day just a little before my 18th birthday I was locked in the closet like usual, naked, handcuffed. I heard a ruckus, heard Bruce explaining to somebody that his girlfriend who was Goth and into BDSM and fantasy was in the closet, heard him showing my fake ID that said I was 19. Then some cops opened the closet; they took off the blindfold and handcuffs, and told me to go put some clothes on then they would speak to me. I actually asked Bruce what he wanted me to put on, but they told me not to worry about that, just get dressed. I came back down stairs and they asked me what I was doing in the closet like that. I stuck to the story that I was 19 and it was just a bondage fantasy with my boyfriend. They explained to me that my boyfriend was being arrested on an outstanding warrant. I asked weakly for a female officer. They told me if I wanted to speak to a female officer there were plenty of them down at the station and asked if it was worth it to me to get arrested also just to talk to a female officer. I realized then that the cops thought I was going to try to defend him; I don’t know what I was going to do, but I backed off on the request. They explained the process for me to bail him out and took him. I was terrified and had no idea whether this was real or just another loyalty test. So I went back in the closet and waited a long time. Still nothing. I had reached a point where I really had to pee. I wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom at will, only when I was told to, and Bruce checked the toilet often to see if it was wet so I didn’t dare to use the toilet. So I went outside, then realized I had locked myself out of the house. I could only get into the garage, so I sat with the dog for a few minutes. The dog, Rocky, was a pit bull and would likely have attacked anyone but Bruce and I, so Bruce kept some money hidden in the garage. So I took the hidden money and fled out of fear Bruce would come back at any point; I let Rocky go out of the garage so he could find food and water in case Bruce really was arrested. I got a cab to Burbank Airport (by this time we had relocated to LA and were living in Pasadena), then went to the ticket counter and got a $29 one-way ticket to Vegas that departed in 40 minutes. Literally 1.5 hours later, I was in another state and suddenly free, but I was terrified that Bruce was going to find me and much of me felt worse for escaping. Now I had to watch over my shoulder and I had very little money, no idea where to go or how to rebuild my life and myself.

That is my escape. No dramatic rescue. No rescuing exit organization. I got away for no other reason than I had to pee and didn’t think to leave the door unlocked to get back in.

Maggie: It’s almost impossible to imagine a person being that broken and yet eventually recovering, but you did it and I can’t even begin to tell you how much that impresses me. I’m a strong person, but compared to you I’m a spoiled whiny-baby.

Jill: Eventually I came back from it. I learned from it. In some ways I don’t regret it because over time I learned about oppression, about understanding the suffering of other people. I grew up in a very conservative family until they threw me out at 14. I wouldn’t likely have learned about tolerance, about empathy, about diversity without the experiences I went through.

Off topic, Maggie: NATIONAL Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid essentially tried to order the Nevada State Legislature to ban prostitution in the state. Never mind that has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with anything related to Reid’s job description. I guess Reid discovered the brothels didn’t send him enough protection money–I mean campaign contributions– last year and have no union to shake down for money. Thus, it was time to try to get rid of them. Ay Dios Mio. Big Brother is alive and well in the Silver State apparently.

I also knew I had no place to go if I did get away; I had no one to call and I was terrified of the police as I had some awful cop clients.

That, and that alone, is reason enough to legalize or decriminalize prostitution. There are other reasons, good reasons. But even if there were no other reasons at all, that would, all by itself, be reason enough: so the next Jill can go to the cops.

I feel the same way as you do, Kaiju. The desire to believe in the basic decency of Man is a deep one, but often a vain one. The way I finally wrapped my head around her experiences was by comparing them to the behavior of cops which I’ve witnessed firsthand. Men like Bruce, or real witch-hunters, or the sickest, most abusive type of cop, are rare, but they’re the ringleaders and they always have a kind of evil charisma which draws weak-minded bullies after them. These followers are of preconventional moral development; they’re like pack animals which can easily be led into good or evil but don’t really comprehend either. They exist down in the lowest moral stages (1 and 2) of the moral development scale and are easily swayed by a strong leader; they make up the majority of gang members, cops and participants in gang rapes and form a loyal nucleus in armies, political parties, religious movements, etc. And once these bullies become numerous enough to constitute something the mind can perceive as a peer or authority group, they can even suck in those of conventional moral stages (3 and 4) who have no internal moral compass and will thus accept whatever morality they’re handed, no matter how hateful or unjust, without question. 😦

Let me put it this way, Kaiju: because human behavior is basically a combination of genetics, history, and psychology (the ‘big three’: the innate, the cultural, the psychological), it is always possible that some combinations of these three factors will lead to horrible results.

In a world in which Hitler made Auschwitz possible — and actually believed he was doing the world a favor by destorying Jews — is it really so hard to imagine the possibility of there being such a twisted personality as this “Bruce’s”?

Nietzsche’s famous quote about the abyss looking back into you is quite sobering. Because the appropriate conditions can produce pretty much anything, men like Bruce (or Hitler… or Stalin.. or Josef Fritzl… or Arcedio Alvarez… or Raymond Gouardo… or a number of others.)

That it so often does not happen — that the overwhelming majority of men, including some pretty bad ones, would be honestly incapable of doing the kind of thing this “Bruce” did to Ms Brenneman — is the thing I sometimes think needs an explanation.

Most adults are stuck in stage 3 or 4, which is why Kohlberg labeled those stages “conventional”. It is scary, but it certainly explains the sort of attitudes we hear all around us every day: “But it’s the law!” or “we need cops to enforce the law” or “because the Bible say so” or “there ought to be a law”. Going through life having to make their own moral decisions is inconceivable for most people. 😦

Interestingly, I’ve noticed most psychologists who write about the system are stage five; they have no trouble explaining the stages up to that, but can’t quite seem to grasp stage six.

Kohlberg’s stages have influenced Clare Graves’ theory of Spiral Dynamics, which in turn feeds into Ken Wilber’s vision of human development and growth (see e.g. his Integral Psychology). It seems that the idea that development goes through “phases” rather than being a continuous ascent is again becoming popular.

Janie’s biggest challenge is getting through the day-to-day life of a pre-teen girl while dealing with her (initially unknown to her) crime-busting alter ego. Tomboy’s big challenge is busting crime while reintegrating her daytime personality so that she can again have a relationship with her father, brother, and daytime friends. She/they is/are willing to use some of the unorthodox methods Rei suggests in order to accomplish this.

One thing to remember is that Janie/Tomboy, for all her strength and skill, is still a child, in both personalities. She still finds cruelty distressing, injustice infuriating, and questions of right and wrong very simple: there are GOOD people and there are BAD people, and the BAD people should be in jail. BAD things are ILLEGAL, thus ILLEGAL things are BAD. Starting with Rei and her psychedelics, Tomboy/Janie has to reconsider, which can be hard for such a young person.

I’ve seen the Kohlberg stages before, though it’s been a while, and that seems to be what I had in mind when I wrote that. It will be good for me to have re-read it.

Eventually I came back from it. I learned from it. In some ways I don’t regret it because over time I learned about oppression, about understanding the suffering of other people. I grew up in a very conservative family until they threw me out at 14. I wouldn’t likely have learned about tolerance, about empathy, about diversity without the experiences I went through.

This is one of the most courageous beliefs about one’s path through life (and how to come to terms with it) that I have ever seen, right up there with testimonies from Holocaust survivors (some of them have written similar things). You are quite a human being, Ms Brenneman.

Kelly James
“I’m a strong person, but compared to you I’m a spoiled whiny-baby.”

me too.

nothin’ much else for even me to say”

Jill’s answer: No, please don’t feel that way. No one who suffers is a spoiled whiny baby. And I certainly was not and am not a hero. It isn’t a competition. It is all subjective. Others in history have suffered far worse than I ever did. I wasn’t strong or courageous. I endured because he wanted me to for whatever reasons he had. Not because of anything special about me. I lived because he didn’t kill me. And didn’t give me access to kill myself. If anything I was a coward. I never took any chances because I was that afraid.

Jill, I can only speak for myself, and so I will only speak for myself. If what I say reflects the feelings of anyone else, they will have to say so themselves.

I do not believe that the fact that you suffered makes you a hero. It doesn’t make you a coward, either. As you say, you did not choose suffering. You were not some bold adventurer, daring to enter the lion’s den. You were a helpless girl on the cusp of womanhood, hungry and in need of shelter. A horrid beast got his hands on you, and you suffered not because you were daring, but because he was a monster.

A hero can suffer. A coward can suffer. Some average person, lying somewhere between hero and coward, can suffer. For that matter, Bruce could suffer. I doubt that anybody here, if we found out that Bruce had been falsely accused of being al Qaida, rendered to Egypt, and tortured, would declare that Bruce is now a hero.

You say that the fact that you survived, that you did not die, does not make you a hero either. You are correct. You didn’t have any choice of living or dying, so the fact that you stayed alive shows neither courage nor cowardice on your part. Again, it was Bruce making the decision. If he wanted you to live, you lived, no matter how lacking in courage you might have been. If he had wanted you to die, you would have died, no matter how brave you might have been. He was utterly in charge, so your having or lacking courage didn’t have anything to do with it.

But then there is what happened after all of that. You could easily have retreated into yourself, not cared what was happening to anybody else. There are plenty of people who have a couple of bad experiences and develop a “fuck ’em all, who cares?” attitude. But instead you wanted to help, first with the antis and then with the pros. You could well be forgiven if you had become the biggest anti-prostitution advocate on the face of the planet. You could have been immune to the evidence that your case isn’t exactly like everybody else’s, and that the best way to help other Jills out there isn’t the Nordic Model. You say that you have trouble forming relationships with men. Well yeah. But you know, it would have very easy for you to have become the very stereotype of the man-hating bitch. You didn’t.

You took all the pain, all the fear, all the uncertainty, and yes, all the rage, and you added a willingness to learn and to adjust your thinking, and you help people. Now, maybe “hero” isn’t the right word. That word is probably over-used, and while I don’t think it is unreasonable to apply it to you because of what you have done after the nightmare, maybe you think that for some reason it isn’t quite right. I have to say that it’s pretty damned admirable.

“Asepe writes”This is one of the most courageous beliefs about one’s path through life (and how to come to terms with it) that I have ever seen, right up there with testimonies from Holocaust survivors (some of them have written similar things). You are quite a human being, Ms Brenneman.”

Jill writes: First, please feel free to call me Jill. Honestly, I don’t believe I have done anything special. I am no where near what holocaust survivors suffered. They watched loved ones suffer and die. I never had to do that. It would have been far harder to watch people I care about suffer. I have long said that if Bruce reappeared in my life, my only goal would be to give others the opportunity to escape before he got them. Much of that is selfish. It is easier to endure than to watch others suffer.

All that my evolution from that suffering did was make me human. Nothing special, just human. I have been very fortunate to have developed strong friendships with very well grounded people who taught me how to apply my past to try to build on it. I learned it because people took the time to teach me to do it. It is the one redeeming event from all of it. I understand things about humanity that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Perhaps I was fortunate that Bruce was as brutal as he was. The level was set so high that I realized the horror of it and didn’t become like him. He also never did the mindfuck of changing between love and hate, pain and reward, etc. It was always violent, all of the time. Because of that, my lines were never blurred.

When I escaped from him, I was on the flight to Vegas when the flight attendant asked me what I wanted to drink. No one had done anything like that in years. I was shocked. I finally said Coke but never opened it because she never told me it was ok to.

There were times when both men and women involved questioned what was happening. But I was presented as, trained to, and did, play the part of his willing 19 year old girlfriend, who was a goth sub. We roleplayed this until I could handle questions about it without much thought and that he could depend on my answers supporting him. Bruce was very proud of the cover story of meeting a confident 19 year old women’s studies student and teaching her “her place”. I upheld the cover story. To do otherwise was a brutal experience afterward. And there were times that he felt I wasn’t convincing enough.

He was very proud of what he could do to me, what I would let him do, that he could pass me around to his friends and mostly that he had taken me from college student to slave. Of course, I was never a college student but that was immaterial.

Sometimes both men and women probably could tell something wasn’t right. Things went too far. More than once some of the men told him to slow things down because they saw he was hurting me a lot and/or saw that he was so aggressive he was risking killing me. Although, I don’t know that they cared about me as much as they were afraid of what he would do to me and make them a witness. But it is important to understand, I played my role, promising it was ok to keep going, telling people I was ok when I wasn’t, ensuring everyone was aware this was my choice even though it wasn’t. I fought very hard to over come their objections because to do otherwise was viewed as betrayal. Many times there were parties in which the first time I played only the role of waitress/hostess with future parties bringing out the rest. Sometimes men brought their female partners to these parties. Sometimes the women balked at staying saying they didn’t want to see what was happening.

As for how Bruce got his clientele. I don’t know. I wasn’t involved in that aspect of things other than when there wasn’t clientele I worked the street to still bring in money.

@Sailor, thank you! It’s a great post. My feeling is that after Bruce, I was given the gifts of meeting true friends that truly understood friendship, humanity and giving something back. Once I had the knowledge they had given me, I knew there truly were truly only two choices. I could live my life ignoring what I had been given or I could take what I had been given and be human and share humanity. I chose to be human.
That is really all I see it as.

If you ever get the chance to go to Chile, I can not advocate enough that you go. Especially in January at mid summer. I’ve never been to another country like it. It is physically beautiful, it’s people are warm and gentle and have a sense of depth and humanity that is often not found.

It is a country in which the warmth of the culture is apparent from the moment you arrive. As a former flight attendant, I have been in so many countries. But I’ve never found one like Chile. If things ever line up for me to be able to live there, I will take the opportunity in a second.

“Men like Bruce, or real witch-hunters, or the sickest, most abusive type of cop, are rare, but they’re the ringleaders and they always have a kind of evil charisma which draws weak-minded bullies after them. These followers are of preconventional moral development; they’re like pack animals which can easily be led into good or evil but don’t really comprehend either. They exist down in the lowest moral stages (1 and 2) of the moral development scale and are easily swayed by a strong leader; they make up the majority of gang members, cops and participants in gang rapes and form a loyal nucleus in armies, political parties, religious movements, etc. And once these bullies become numerous enough to constitute something the mind can perceive as a peer or authority group, they can even suck in those of conventional moral stages (3 and 4) who have no internal moral compass and will thus accept whatever morality they’re handed, no matter how hateful or unjust, without question. ”

Right now I am feeling all kinds of emotions, mostly sadness. I think the above helped a little to answer the questions rattling around in my mind.

[…] rights movement. As a teen, Brenneman suffered years of of brutal abuse in which she was coerced into working as a professional submissive. In the early aughts, Jill made an amazing conversion from membership in the prohibitionist […]

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